Gore Uses Disputed Count to Encourage Iowa Turnout

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: October 15, 2002

MOUNT VERNON, Iowa, Oct. 14—
Al Gore campaigned across Iowa today on behalf of Democratic Congressional candidates, lacerating the record of President Bush and invoking his own bitterly disputed loss in Florida in 2000 as he urged Democrats to vote.

The appearances by Mr. Gore, the former vice president who lost to Mr. Bush in 2000, seemed designed to help his party this November and to encourage speculation about Mr. Gore's presidential aspirations.

''Do you remember where you were when they stopped counting the vote in 2000; do you remember how you felt?'' Mr. Gore asked at a raucous rally this afternoon at Cornell College here

''Cheated!'' a few of the undergraduates roared back.

''Well, the next time somebody says to you that it does not make any difference who wins the election, think about all that has happened since that election,'' Mr. Gore said, grinning at his reception. ''I think Bill Clinton and I did a damn good job.''

Mr. Gore's references to his own experience in Florida drew ecstatic reactions today at a series of Democratic rallies. His decision to invoke the issue explicitly suggested that after a long silence by many Democrats, Mr. Gore, at least, continued to look at the disputed vote in Florida as a source of continuing anger and a way to get voters to the polls.

Some Democrats, including Mr. Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile, have voiced concern in recent days that reminding voters of 2000 would discourage turnout, but there was little evidence of that here today.

''You were robbed,'' one man shouted out when Mr. Gore raised it this evening at a rally at the University of Iowa.

''We were robbed,'' another shouted.

Mr. Gore beamed as he stoked up his crowd. ''Now, the next time somebody tells you between now and Nov. 5 that one vote doesn't make a difference, you ask them to come and talk to me about that,'' he said.

The two-day swing through the state, which began this morning, allows Mr. Gore to tend to two tasks. The first is to campaign for Democrats in four of the most closely contested Congressional districts. His appearances come after months in which many Democrats had complained that Mr. Gore had not done enough for his party and its candidates.

But there are direct benefits for Mr. Gore as well. As it turns out, those contests are clustered in Iowa, the home of the caucuses that initiate the presidential nomination process and that are pivotal to Mr. Gore's best hopes of running for president again.

The tour represents the most concerted burst of politicking by the former vice president this fall.

Mr. Gore said today that he would announce by the end of December whether he would run for president in 2004. This time, he was responding to a question posed to him by a stranger over a cellphone thrust into his hand when he stopped to buy a soda at a rest area. He was driving himself through Iowa in a rented green Grand Prix with Illinois license plates.

His aides said today that Mr. Gore had agreed to do a series of sit-down interviews after Election Day. The interviews will coincide with what should presumably be an acceleration in his decision making about the White House, as well as with the release of a new book by Mr. Gore and his wife, Tipper.

Mr. Gore framed his speeches today as appeals to Iowans to elect Democrats to Congress. But he sounded like a man testing out a case to be made against Mr. Bush.

He argued that the Bush administration had squandered the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency.

''We've seen in just two years time the squandering of the biggest budget surpluses that we have ever had in America,'' he said.

Mr. Gore strongly suggested, without saying it outright, that the administration had focused on Saddam Hussein in part to divert attention from domestic problems during an election season.

''What the president and the vice president are trying to say to you is don't worry about the economy, let's talk about something else,'' he said this morning in Dubuque. ''Don't worry about the layoffs and the rising unemployment and the foreclosures and the personal debt. Let's think about other things.''